These 3 Horror Icons Hated These Iconic Horror Films

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Not all horror films are created equal, and not all horror icons agree on which are the most iconic. The following horror legends found these films to be alarming — and not in the good way.

1. Stephen King Doesn't Like The Shining

Changes are bound to happen when you adapt a literary classic to the silver screen, but Stephen King was less than impressed with Stanley Kubrick's version of his 1977 horror novel. Here's what he said to Rolling Stone:

"The book is hot, and the movie is cold; the book ends in fire, and the movie in ice. In the book, there's an actual arc where you see this guy, Jack Torrance, trying to be good, and little by little he moves over to this place where he's crazy. And as far as I was concerned, when I saw the movie, Jack was crazy from the first scene. I had to keep my mouth shut at the time. It was a screening, and Nicholson was there. But I'm thinking to myself the minute he's on the screen, 'Oh, I know this guy. I've seen him in five motorcycle movies, where Jack Nicholson played the same part.' And it's so misogynistic. I mean, Wendy Torrance is just presented as this sort of screaming dishrag. But that's just me, that's the way I am.

2. John Carpenter Hates Friday The 13th

The very man who helped paved the way for the success of the slasher film in the '80s found some of what he inspired to be less than thrilling. The Halloween director didn't think very highly of Friday The 13th. Without a hero to root for like Laurie Strode or Dr. Sam Loomis, he thought slashing for slashing's sake was pretty cheap. As he put it during the Bret Easton Ellis podcast:

And 'Friday the 13th,' I feel, affects me as very cynical. It’s very cynical moviemaking. It just doesn’t rise above its cheapness.

3. Robert Englund Couldn't Stand The Nightmare On Elm Street Remake

Initially optimistic about passing the child-killing baton on to Jackie Earle Haley (he'll still always be our favorite Freddy), Englund has finally voiced his displeasure at the Nightmare On Elm Street reboot. But it wasn't Haley's interpretation of Freddy that bothered him. Like King on The Shining, he found the new version of the story lacked the same arc as the original. He described it at Belfast Comic-Con:

“They reshot the opening and it threw the movie off-kilter. You don’t see any of the people happy-go-lucky, they’re never untainted. They’re practically zombies from the get-go because they’re haunted by Freddy, and I think that was a miscalculation. You need to see before and after so you can invest emotionally with the children.”

What did you think of the movies? Do you agree with these horror icons?